Has anyone heard of Red Star OS? I was thinking of getting it just because it sounds cool and I want something new. Is this a good distro to have?

1. It is now called "Estrella Roja" and is North Korean.
2. It was discontinued in 2011 and has had no updates since. The only kernel (I was going to say supported kernel, but none of it is now supported) is 2.6.38 when current release is 4.11! Insecure from the start, it is now also SERIOUSLY outdated.
3. You can learn more, and get download links, from the distrowatch page here http://distrowatch.com/table.php?dis...n=estrellaroja

I would not trust it, but if you decide to try do be careful. Best of luck!

This is a 100% do not touch, it is the official North Korean OS and is definitely preloaded with various bits of spyware/malware/etc that reports back to the old "peoples democratic republic". It also rips off various copyrighted features from OSs, such as Mac OS and Windows.

Welcome to the forum!

That distro's not from North Korea, but Argentina. The place to find out about distros is http://distrowatch.com
Some of the less well-known ones are well worth trying. Ones that I've liked that are not in the top 100 are SalentOS and Point. If you want to try something outside the endless set of Debian derivatives, try PCLinuxOS, Salix, or Manjaro.

let me clear this up...
there is (not was) indeed a RedStar OS and it is indeed north korean.
i wouldn't even know where to get this, but... well, you know about north korea, no? don't use it. (*)

"Estrella Roja" was indeed another distro, and literally means "Red Star" (in Spanish i guess).
i found no indication that the one had anything to do with the other.

that said...
that is not a good basis to make distro choices on.


(*)

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Thank you for the replies and I've decided against the Red Star OS but I am now curious as to what would be so dangerous about using a North Korean OS outside NK?

You don't know why you wouldn't want to use an OS from North Korea? You are naive as they get! Try this, it could be doing anything, like transmitting your personally identifying information to the NK government, who then notice you once visited a website critical of the NK leader.

Now, you get a fantastic job. After three years you move way up. You're cool, rich, and all that goes with it. But you have to do some business in NK. They crosscheck your passport with a list of known enemies of the NK state.

They see you are guilty of actions against the NK government, because you viewed a website critical of their leader. You are promptly arrested and sentenced to 10 years hard labor.

Now do you get it?

Why would I be doing business in NK? In fact I would never be doing anything in NK for as long as it is the same nation it is today. So what authority would the NK government even have?

I try to caution users against using various distro's. One famous distro was Backtrack. A distro designed (claimed) to be used to test your system. It had some very suspicious things going on in my mind so I asked myself. What would a distro be like that was designed by hackers?? What would a distro be like designed by a less than free community?

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OK, then let's just say you make a blog post critical of NK. They send three secret agents and spray your eyes with a nerve agent, like that guy in the Malaysian airport.

The US Department of State has a warning that US citizens should not contact anyone in NK, for any reason!

BobthinksIknownada, I think it's a cool idea.
in fact, it should become a sort of insider fashion to use operating systems from totalitarian nations on everyday machines. a little bit like kali linux from mr robot. tempting fate an'all that. like those guys that used to drive cars down cliffs and jump out at the last moment possible.

but i couldn't find a download button. i couldn't even find their website.
can you help me?

Unfortunately I can't. I only heard of it from an article that listed different Linux distros so I started up a conversation about it.

thought as much.